4.4. Automatic Installation

For installing on multiple computers it's possible to do fully
automatic installations. Debian packages intended for this include
fai (which uses an install server),
replicator,
systemimager,
autoinstall, and
the Debian Installer itself.

4.4.1. Automatic Installation Using the Debian Installer

The Debian Installer supports automating installs via preconfiguration
files. A preconfiguration file can be loaded from the network or from
removable media, and used to fill in answers to questions asked during the
installation process.

Although most dialogs used by debian-installer can be preseeded using this method,
there are some notable exceptions. You can (re)partition an entire disk
or use available free space on a disk; it is not possible to use existing
partitions. You currently cannot use preseeding to set up RAID and LVM.
Also, with the exception of network driver modules, it is not possible
to preconfigure kernel module parameters.

Alternatively, one way to get a complete file listing
all the values that can be preseeded is to do a manual install,
and then use debconf-get-selections,
from the debconf-utils package,
to dump both the debconf database and the cdebconf
database in /var/log/debian-installer/cdebconf to a single file:

Once you have a preconfiguration file, you can edit it if necessary, and
place it on a web server, or copy it onto the installer's boot media. Wherever
you place the file, you need to pass a parameter to the installer at boot
time to tell it to use the file.

To make the installer use a preconfiguration file downloaded from the
network, add preseed/url=http://url/to/preseed.cfg to the kernel boot
parameters. Of course the preconfiguration will not take effect until the
installer manages to set up the network to download the file, so this is
most useful if the installer can set up the network via DHCP without asking
any questions. You may want to set the installation priority to critical to
avoid any questions while the network is being configured. See
Section 5.2.1, “Debian Installer Parameters”.

To place a preconfiguration file on a CD, you would need to remaster the
ISO image to include your preconfiguration file. See the manual page for
mkisofs for details. Alternatively, put the preseed file on a floppy, and
use preseed/file=/floppy/preseed.cfg